Ivorians want to print their label on wax

From the African continent to the podium of haute couture houses, wax has never been so trendy. In just a few years, Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé and Rihanna have all adopted colorful geometric print, proud to claim a pan-African style.

Inspired by Indonesian batik, the wax is first made in England, then in the Netherlands around 1870, the colorful and cracked print, without any place or reverse, quickly seduces the Africans who adopt for their traditional African outfits. It flows on the Congolese, Benin, Mali, Togo and Ivorian markets, relegating more than a century of local traditional fabrics to the background.

Since the 2000s, the traditional loincloth found, him, a second wind in Ivory Coast, in particular. These strips of ethnic cloth about 6 meters long are used to make skirts, jackets and hats. "Of course, people still carry a lot of wax, but the traditional loincloth is much more used than thirty or forty years ago," confirms Chantal Guiraud, president of the Ivorian Federation of Traditional Textiles (FITT), interviewed by France 24 during the national day of the loincloth organized in Abidjan.

Tissues of less good quality and cheaper

If the fabric market is now deeply shaken, it is mainly because of the diversification of the qualities of fabrics and printing that have broken the prices. For more than a century, a behemoth has held the monopoly: Vlisco. The Anglo-Dutch group, which celebrated its 170th anniversary in 2018, produces around 64 million meters of fabric each year, and sells 90% of them in Africa, for nearly 300 million euros of turnover in 2014.

But its prices have become too expensive for Ivorian families: between 30,000 CFA francs (about 46 euros) and 45,000 FCFA (about 68 euros). "Faced with this, traders have come together to go to Asia and have pagnes manufactured at lower cost," said France 24 Farikou Soumahoro, president of the federation of small traders Ivorian FENACCI. High quality Chinese brands, such as Hi Target, offer pagnes between 6,000 and 8,000 FCFA (between 9 and 12 euros).

To keep the stranglehold, the Dutch group - ceded to the British investment company Actis in 2010 - fought back by multiplying market research. "Vlisco regularly sends its marketing team to Africa to meet women in the markets and probe trends," said Aiwan Obinyan, director of the documentary "Wax Print" (2018). "The company even sends its creators there to find inspiration," she adds.

Ivorians must "reinvest their indigenous textiles"

But the counter-attack does not stop there. Some traders in Abidjan claim that Uniwax, the subsidiary of the Vlisco group in Ivory Coast, carries out inspections in the shops. "Representatives of the company, in civilian clothes, come to take a look at our loincloths and come back with the police to take what they want, says one of them on condition of anonymity." They take what they claim to be counterfeit, as well as all Chinese brands like Hi Target. We can not do anything, "says another, before saying:" They then resell all the loincloths they seized on the markets. "According to him, this type of operation is renewed every six months.

The Ivorian association of small traders denounces these practices. "We are importing these cloths, paying customs duties and shipping the goods to our stores, defends its president Farikou Soumahoro, who refuses to talk about counterfeiting." The Chinese have now acquired "the technique of printing with wax ", said Aiwan Obinyan," If at the time, it was very easy to tell the difference between a real wax and a counterfeit fabric, it became much more complicated today, "notes the director. 600 pagnes were seized in several Ivorian cities (San Pedro, Port Pouet and Man), according to the FENACCI which had requested the intervention of the Ivorian Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly.

The association complained, but no follow-up was given to the case. For its part, Uniwax has refuted any comments.

For Chantal Guiraud, president of the Ivorian Federation of Traditional Textiles (FITT), the patterns of the waxed fabrics of Uniwax and Vlisco belong to the regions of Côte d'Ivoire. "But these traditional designs were not only filed by European brands, but copied by Chinese manufacturers," she laments, while "all the reasons for Côte d'Ivoire are intellectual property." "Why can these countries take ownership of them? Why does not anyone do anything?", She indignantly. For Aiwan Obinyan, there is only one solution: "We must reinvest our own indigenous textiles."

This text is an adaptation of the article by Franck Hersey : "Putting the 'African' back in West African wax print fabrics" by Ségolène ALLEMANDOU